Legend has it that the first magnets used by man were by the shepherd Magnes of Crete around 4000 years ago. Allegedly, the nails that were in his shoes and the metal tip of his herding staff were attracted to a large black rock upon which he was standing. Upon digging up the black rock, Magnes discovered that the rock contained lodestones. The Greeks, Indians and Chinese all described magnets around 2500 years ago, and the Roman Pliny the Elder described lodestones properties in the fast century AD. Later in history (around 1948), lodestones were discovered to contain magnetite, which was composed of Iron (II, III) oxide, Fe3O4, an alloy which contains permanent ferrimagnetic properties.
Two distinct model theories have been forwarded by scientists for how magnets work. One model uses poles to describe how magnets work and the second model uses small electric currents to describe magnetization. The pole theory is supported by the fact that a magnet pole when allowed to spin freely will align itself with the earth's magnetic fields. The electric current model was supported by early work done by the Scot James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century, whose equations explained how magnets would behave.
Christopher Columbus on his trips to the new world noticed that the natives in what is now present day Haiti were playing a game with a ball that was made of a gum that came from trees. Rubber from the rubber trees was used in the intervening period from when Columbus visited the new world to the time when Thomas Hancock in Britain and Charles Goodyear in the United States developed techniques and were awarded patents in their respective countries for the vulcanization of rubber (adding sulfur and heat to cause crosslinking). The vulcanization process added strength the rubbers that had previously not been present. Even later, various synthetic polymeric elastomers were developed that had qualities that made them superior to the vulcanized rubber.
Magnets and rubbers/elastomeric resins have been used separately for a plurality of purposes. Magnets have been used in magnetic resonance imaging and have long been used for other medical purposes. Rubbers and elastomers have been used for tires, containers, and many other purposes. However, to the inventors' knowledge, magnets and elastomers have not been used to any great extent together. The use of these two materials together led to the present invention.